A love for collaboration, creative exploration, and conscious environmental consideration result in a bountiful yield for the combined efforts of New York-based lighting manufacturer RBW and Brooklyn-based multi-hyphenate designer Little Wing Lee of Studio & Projects as they come together to unveil four new luminaries: Cape, Copia, Crepe, and Cuff. What began as curiosities explored through casual conversations now culminates in sconce designs that delight in material obsession.
The Cape wall sconces
While the collections’ crux and throughline is this playful physicality, each individual luminaire comes with a unique design implication as a result of additional layers of material influence added to a modular, selectable white LED board light. “I’m a bit of a researcher at heart, so I always love to start and to ground a project by looking at basic things like context, location, and function,” Lee says. “We value curiosity and the integration of diverse influences to create meaningful and thoughtful designs.”
The Copia wall sconces
Lee turns each object into an artifact imbuing the alliterative series with unique narratives by pulling inspiration from an assortment of seemingly disparate sources. “That could mean a color palette from a painting, the lighting in a photograph, or simply the mood and emotion of a piece,” she says. A wealth of ideas and rich material sources led the team to broaden the scope from a single fixture to its current quartet. “From our first meetings with Little Wing in her studio, our conversations always centered around actual material samples and found objects like trays or plates,” relays Theo Richardson, co-founder and director of innovation at RBW, as he shares their sentiment. “After the original brainstorm session, we realized there were so many great ideas on the table. Why stop at one? Each concept had an overarching theme or gravitational pull that guided us through the rest of the process.” And each of those creative concepts came with its own unique set of challenges that required equally robust manufacturing prowess.
The Crepe wall sconces in small
The breadth of designs allow for wider audience appeal while accommodating a variety of spaces and solutions it otherwise couldn’t as a standalone set. These products can make themselves useful and assimilate with a variety of interior decor. There’s something to suit a variety of tastes from being able to specify custom RAL colors for Cape’s cage to selecting one of the tinted crystal-like housings for Copia. And from the scale of glass disks showcased in Crepe to the metallic detailing of Cuff. Customization through ownership adds to the canon for an already storied collection.
The Cuff wall sconces
CAPE
Seafaring by design, Cape recalls nautical lighting fixtures with its cage-like, industrial language. The protective wire frame not only anchors the aesthetic, but leans into patterning and repetition as it casts light and shadow. The maritime luminaire is available in sizes small and medium, and in four powder coated standard finishes with options for color customization.
COPIA
A study in transparency, Copia glows with a ring light halo as it explores layers and translucency. The bubbly form is easy and vaguely neotenic, sparking a little bit of joy every time it illuminates. This fixture is available flush mount or as a sconce, and has four ethereal glass finishes.
CREPE
Crepe shares aesthetic genes with its relatives in the pastille collection and is reframed in this iteration. It projects a “film mode” quality of vintage-inspired glass and produces gently diffused light through its plate. The sconce is available in sizes small, medium, and large, as well as two material finishes.
CUFF
Aptly named, Cuff combines the sophistication of fine jewelry through implied form with the a range of metallics that promise of a rich patina over time makes. The lighting element is also showcased within the cuff as if set like a precious stone. This collection is available in two sand-casted metal finishes and two powder coated surfaces with options for customization.
To explore these collections more visit rbw.com. And to learn more about Brooklyn-based interior, architectural, and environmental designer behind it all, visit littlewinglee.com.
